Crime

Gardai will be on high alert at the start of next month for the release from prison of notorious gangster 'Fat' Freddie Thompson.

Thompson, who has been locked up since May of last year, is spending the final weeks of his sentence in Mountjoy Prison.

Gardai are prepared for a massive upsurge in tension when he is back on the streets.

"One thing you can say about Thompson is that the situation is always much more fraught when he is around the place," a source told the Herald.

"What happens is you have young fellas going around trying to impress him and then you have his rivals seeking him out to kill him.

"To say that Freddie is a general nuisance would be a complete understatement," they added.

Thompson (34) is said to be "really looking forward" to being reunited with his young son and wife Vicky, but it is unknown how long he intends to stay in Ireland.

Although he is pencilled in for release on August 8, he could be set free some days before this. Sources said that he is eyeing up a return to Costa del Sol, Spain, where he had built a base.

"Getting out of the country would definitely be the safest move for him, but he was never the smartest criminal around the block so who knows what he will do," the source added.

A potential flashpoint that detectives will be monitoring is whether Thompson will go head-to-head again with his old adversary Declan 'Whacker' Duffy, with whom he was involved in a bitter feud with in 2008 and 2009.

Duffy has been stepping up his lucrative extortion activities in Dublin's south inner city in recent months and was arrested last week.

Thompson has been far from a model inmate and spent a number of weeks on a punishment regime in Cork jail, where he was sent for his disruptive behaviour in Cloverhill.

He was fined €200 in January after pleading guilty to having a mobile phone in his cell.

Thompson avoided a further jail term after he admitted he had caved in to temptation and used the phone to call his sister while being he was in Cloverhill on May 29 last year.

Thompson, who was extradited from Amsterdam last May and has been in custody since, has 29 previous convictions, including a three-year jail term for assault causing harm.

disorder

Thompson, of Loreto Park, Maryland, pleaded guilty last February along with two others to violent disorder in a pub after a funeral.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that Thompson had become a suspect after gardai viewed CCTV footage from Morrissey's Pub in Cork Street, Dublin.

Judge Martin Nolan said that on the day in question, January 7, 2013, there was "a quite serious fracas" with many people involved, and that a beer bottle was thrown at one victim.